Assange: Snowden’s ‘ordeal' just beginning

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is calling former contractor Edward Snowden, who has admitted to leaking information on classified National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs, part of a “generation that Barack Obama betrayed.”

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According to a transcript of remarks he planned to deliver Saturday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange is urging the world to “[s]tep forward and stand with” Snowden.

Assange said charges against Snowden are “intended to intimidate any country that might be considering standing up for his rights.”

Assange said government secrecy has been “expanding on a terrific scale” in the last decade, while “human privacy has been secretly eradicated.”

“It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice,” he said.